A Little Complication
by BiteMarks
Summary: An innocent in trouble has a strange and significant meeting that will change her life one dark L.A. evening...


**A Little Complication**

Rivets. I never realised how similar in size they were to the covered buttons on my father's coat until they were under my palm, cold and round and slimy with the rising condensation from the river. It had been a long while since my thumb had rubbed across the worn, suede surface of one of those, but I wasn't thinking about that as I grasped the thick, square edge of the girder and hauled myself up.

It was peaceful up here so far from the noise and the pollution of the passing cars below. By day, the water chugging sluggishly underneath was a murky grey but by night it was as black as polished onyx; city lights floating on its surface, like our very own Atlantis floating beneath an endless sea. I lifted a foot off the beam and stretched it out over the void below. All I needed to do was let go. If I closed my eyes I wouldn't even see the world as it plummeted away. It would be just like falling into a dream.

I uncurled my fingers from the thick lip of the metal beam and stood there balanced on one leg. I was tossing up whether or not to make it a conscious choice or if it was better just to allow a random gust of wind to take me when a voice beside me spoke.

"It's painful, you know," the voice said, just as if we were fellow commuters passing time as we waited for the 5:13 to Union Station. "At this height you hit the water at fifty miles an hour. It feels like concrete and you don't always black out, at least - not right away."

Startled, I lost my balance and began to wobble over the water. I was going to fall!

In an unthinking panic, I flung both arms around the vertical beam and clung there, swaying wildly on my feet as my head whipped from side to side in search of my mysterious companion. How I hadn't noticed him as I climbed I still don't understand, because there he was, as large as life, a tall man dressed in shadow lounging against the opposite pillar, the outline of his face cocked to one side as if he were sizing me up, like I was an exotic variety of fruit that he wasn't quite sure whether or not he was going to buy.

"You can't stop me," I said, spooked and more than a little put out. "If you come any closer I'll jump." My heart was hammering so frantically at that point that I didn't mean it, but he didn't know that.

He was silent for a moment and then he said, "What's his name?"

"Huh - ?"

"The man you're trying to forget," he said. "What's his name?"

I clung to the girder even harder, beginning to feel resentful that my chosen point of disembarkation from this mortal coil had already been in use. Was he another jumper or worse, a good Samaritan? I said nothing, but hoped he could see my suspicious frown from within the shadow of the bridge.

He sighed. "I've been around a long time, seen a lot of things. I've learned that you can't really protect anyone from themselves in this life. What you want to do with yours is up to you. Go ahead and jump. I won't try to stop you."

Definitely not the latter, then. I got the feeling that little speech was a lot more than he usually said and that it had tired him, because he leaned forward a little then and an arc of light fell across his face. He was handsome, with a jaw you could cut a lip on and the saddest, kindest eyes I've ever seen. Right then I knew I'd tell him anything.

"Hank," I said. "Allan Henry Jackson."

"Of Jackson and Rebusson? The mid-town law firm?"

I nodded. "I've been part of his secretarial staff for the last three months."

"And his mistress..?"

The shame blazed hotly from both cheeks. "..for the last two."

Only yesterday the L.A. Times had printed a front page photograph of his wife holding a small child on her lap and smiling as she opened a new day care centre for the underprivileged of south central L.A. A tear rolled down my cheek.

"You didn't know." It was a statement, not a question. "Nice guy."

There was one time I'd thought so.

The tears started in earnest then, for that stupid, trusting girl and for the future she'd given up to please a man who didn't care. It wasn't even the threats he'd made once I went to him, desperate and hurt that the future he'd hinted at would never be, that bothered me, but the fact that he didn't love me, had never loved me if he could act that way. When I spoke my voice was bitter.

"What a fool I am, right? As if a man like that could ever have loved someone like me."

One of his eyebrows shot up. "No one can love you unless you love yourself first," he said sharply. "If you don't, the ones you let through your front door will exploit you. Trust me. I know." He slumped back onto the girder as if those few short sentences had been waiting there to be said for a very long time. Eventually the silence became almost companionable again and he asked, "Where you from, kid?"

"Hick Town, Alabama," I said.

"Family?"

I shook my head. We stood there quietly together, watching the lights on the water ripple in the breeze. "Hey!" I said, remembering my initial assumption that he was jumper like me. It didn't seem to matter that someone as insignificant as me might fall away and disappear, but all of a sudden the thought of this kind stranger stepping out and disappearing from the world forever hurt the place around my heart. "Don't do it."

His lips quirked in a melancholy little half smile. "Death has other plans for me," he said, and looked across and caught my eye. "As it does for you."

"What do you mean?"

"You're not ready to meet your maker yet. If you were you would have let yourself fall the first moment I spoke to you."

He was right. The moment had passed. Not the mood, mind. I still felt lost, just… not so awfully alone anymore.

His gaze intensified then and his next words almost made me cry. "Hang in there, Hick Town. Fate brought me here for a reason. I have a feeling you're someone special." He began to climb down and held out a helping hand. "C'mon. Let me walk you home."

We didn't say much as we walked the lonely streets together, but the silence felt all right. When we got to my front door, he looked a little awkward, especially when I pressed my cheek against the rough wool of his coat and squeezed him hard. He drew back, still looking a little abashed and then he pressed a card into my hand.

_Mick St. John Investigations_.

"Ring me if you ever need anything, Hick Town. And I mean anytime." A cool fingertip tipped my chin up until our gazes locked and then he reached out and laid his palm upon my belly. "Look after yourself and the baby," he whispered. "Family is everything."

I didn't know how he knew about the baby, but I thought of him often in the years that followed, thanking him silently every time I kissed a scraped knee better or wiped a runny nose. Most of all I was grateful that he was there for me, just like he promised he'd be, the night I pounded on his door, distraught and alone, crying for my kidnapped baby girl.


End file.
